Haggis was invented by the English, not the Scottish, says historian

Haggis was invented by the English before being hijacked by Scottish nationalists, a leading food historian has claimed.

English recipe published 171 years before Robert Burns popularised the dish in ScotlandPhoto: Christopher Jones

By Simon Johnson

1:23PM BST 02 Aug 2009

Catherine Brown has discovered references to the dish in a recipe book dated 1615, The English Hus-wife by Gervase Markham.

This was published at least 171 years before Robert Burns penned his poem Address to a Haggis, which made the delicacy famous.

The first mention she could find of Scottish haggis was in 1747, indicating that the dish originated south of the Border and was later copied from English books.

Ms Brown, whose findings feature in a TV documentary broadcast this week, said: "It was originally an English dish. In 1615, Gervase Markham says that it is very popular among all people in England.

"By the middle of the 18th century another English cookery writer, Hannah Glasse, has a recipe that she calls Scotch haggis, the haggis that we know today."

But reference to haggis in a 1771 novel by Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, showed it was considered a Scottish dish by the late 18th century.

The English hero of the story says: "I am not yet Scotchman enough to relish their singed sheep's head and haggis."

Haggis, which is made from a mixture of oatmeal, liver, heart and lungs, is not the first Scottish icon said to originate from England.

In his last book before his death, Hugh Trevor-Roper, the eminent historian, wrote that the kilt's inventor was a Quaker from Lancashire.

Ms Brown believes that Scottish nationalists may have appropriated haggis as a symbol of their nationhood in the decades following the Act of Union with England in 1707.

"It seems to be that there's an identity thing there. We'd lost our monarchy, we'd lost our parliament and we gained our haggis," she said.

"There was a latching onto everything that was distinctive about Scotland, and Burns had identified the dish in such an evocative way."

She said Burns claimed the pudding as Scottish with his poem in 1786 because it was a thrifty contrast to the elaborate and pretentious French cuisine popular in Edinburgh at the time.

However, she said the word haggis is also of English origin.

James Macsween, director of Macsween's, the award-winning Edinburgh haggis-maker, said that whatever its origin, the pudding would remain a Scottish icon.

He said: "This is certainly a revelation to me, but haggis is now renowned as Scotland's dish largely due to Robert Burns, who made it famous.

"That's not to say that prior to Burns that haggis wasn't eaten in England, but Scotland has done a better job of looking after it. I didn't hear Shakespeare writing a poem about haggis."

Ian Scott, a member of the Saltire Society, which aims to preserve Scottish culture, said: "I'd tuck into it with even greater gusto if I thought that it had been invented by the English. I mean, they are bound to have invented something worthwhile."

* The documentary, Made in Scotland, is broadcast on STV at 9pm on Thursday.